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Educated Youth

352 pages
Paperback, 23.4 x 15.3 cm
Published June 2016
ISBN 9781925336047

Educated Youth

Ye Xin

Translated by Jing Han

During the Cultural Revolution over fourteen million Chinese high school graduates were sent from the cities to live and work in the countryside. They were known as zhiqing – ‘educated youth’. They fell in love, married, had children. In the late 1970s the policy changed and they were allowed to return, but not their families. Many jumped at the opportunity, leaving spouses and children behind. Ten years later the children, now teenagers, began to turn up in the cities, looking for their parents. Educated Youth follows five such children, who have travelled across China from a province in the south west to Shanghai in the east, only to discover that their mothers and fathers have remarried, and have new families, in which there is no room for them. Their reappearance brings out the worst in the parents – their duplicity, greed and self-interest – and the best too, as they struggle to come to terms with their sense of love and duty.

With a mix of popular storytelling, psychological insight and startling candour about his generation, Ye Xin turns a slice of recent Shanghai life into an entertaining, touching novel. It’s great to have a fine English version of this Chinese modern classic. Nicholas Jose

 

About the Author & Translator

Ye Xin

Ye Xin was born in Shanghai in October 1949. He was sent to Guizhou Province as a zhiqing in 1969 and worked on the construction of the Hunan-Guizhou railway. His novels include High Sierra in Miaoling, The Ages of Idling Away, Family Education, Love Has No Choice and Shanghai Diary. He has won many awards […]

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Jing Han

Dr Jing Han is senior lecturer and associate dean for international in School of Humanities and Communication Arts, Western Sydney University, and head of Subtitling Department of SBS TV Australia. She has gained recognition as a leading expert in subtitling and intercultural communications through her significant and original contributions to the practice and teaching in the field.

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